Thank You IrwinShapiro

Image credits: R.Nelson/QMUL; NASA/JPL; D.Aguilar/CfA.

Image credit: Gamma-Ray Burst 971214; S. Kulkarni and S. Djorgovski,

STScI/ NASA/ AURA, Inc., & W.M. Keck Observatory

Irwin Shapiro

1929 Born in New York City

1950 AB in Mathematics from Cornell University

1954 Joined MIT Lincoln Laboratory

1955 PhD in Physics from Harvard University

1964 The Shapiro time delay, discovered by Shapiro

1967 Became Professor of Physics at MIT

1975 Albert A. Michelson Medal of the Franklin Institute

1982 Became a Professor at Harvard University

1982 Became Director of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics

1988 Dirk Brouwer Award of the AAS's Division on Dynamical Astronomy

1991 Charles A. Whitten Medal from the American Geophysical Union

1994 The Albert Einstein Medal

1997 Became the First Timken University Professor

2004 Founding member, Institute for Theory and Computation

We are grateful to you for founding

the ITC and making so many generous

contributions to its success.

2002 Gamma-Ray Bursts: The Brightest

Explosions in the Universe

Jim Moran, Ofrit Liviatan, Eli Waxman, Jerry Ostriker, Martin Rees, Avi Loeb, Irwin Shapiro, Raymond Sackler,

& Ramesh Narayan

Jim Moran, Avi Loeb, Jerry Ostriker, Irwin Shapiro, Ramesh Narayan, Raymond Sackler &

Simon White

2000 The First Generation of Cosmic Structures

Raymond Sackler, Irwin Shapiro, Jerry Ostriker, & Claude Canizares

Jim Moran, Alex Delgarno, Stephen Weinberg, John Karlstrom, Irwin Shapiro & Avi Loeb

Jerry Ostriker, Ofrit Liviatan, Martin Rees, Avi Loeb, Irwin Shapiro & Raymond Sackler

2004

Astrophysics of Planetary Systems

Irwin Shapiro & Ruth Murray - Clay

Irwin Shapiro & Tristan Guillot

Irwin Shapiro, Marian

Shapiro, Robert Kirshner,

Jayne Loader, Stephen

Weinberg, Avi Loeb, Ofrit

Liviatan, & Ramesh

Narayan

2006 The History of Nuclear Black Holes in Galaxies

Irwin Shapiro & Martha Haynes

George Ricker, Robert Kirshner, Jayne

Loader, Roger Blandford, Irwin Shapiro,

Steve Furlanetto and Peter Hoeflich

2008

21cm Cosmology

Avi Loeb, Irwin Shapiro and Neil Gehrels

Irwin Shapiro, Rebecca Shafee, Matt McQuinn & Jeffrey McClintock

Matt &

Julieta

Holman

and

Irwin &

Marian

Shapiro

2010 Dynamics from the

Galactic Center to the

Milky Way Halo

2012

Testing General Relativity (GR) with

Astrophysical Systems

Irwin Shapiro and

Ken Freeman

A Note to IrwinShapiro From: Francis Everitt

Irwin,

Words are easy; integrity is hard. Recently, you and I had exchanged memories

connected with the famous ‘Shapiro Committee’ pictured above. Maybe I’ll write

mine up formally someday. Meanwhile, let me say this. Ever since we met in

1967 (for a visit to Haystack, a chat about Schiff, and above all an ever

memorable Lantern Lane Dinner with you, Marian, and the Young family), the

quality in you that has rung highest for me has been your human and scientific

integrity. Fine ideas, yes; notable discoveries, yes; leadership for SAO and the

community, yes; but this beyond all is I2S. The world is a better place for your

presence in it.

– Francis

A Note to IrwinShapiro

From: Emilio Falco

Dear Irwin:

In the absence of a picture with you, what

better than Old Faithful for your stand-in!

Enjoy the conference.

Emilio

A Note to IrwinShapiro From: Haystack Observatory

Dear Irwin, 

Clearly this is the image of a well‐practiced slugger!  Surely, if all of us on the 

Nine Planets softball team of the Earth & Planetary Science Department did as 

well, we would have had an undefeated season in the summer of 1974! 

Very best wishes from the Haystack members 

of the Nine Planets 

 

 

A Note to IrwinShapiro From: Haystack Observatory

Dear Irwin, 

This is a photo taken at the 1981 dedication of Westford after its transformation 

to a geodetic‐VLBI station.  From left‐to‐right: Brian Corey, Hans Hinteregger, 

Alan Whitney, Roger Cappallo, Tom Fischetti ,Bob Coates, Bill Carter, Tom Clark, 

Alan Rogers, Tom Herring, Irwin Shapiro, ?, and John Weber. 

Best wishes from all of us at Haystack! 

 

 

 

A Note to IrwinShapiro From: Haystack Observatory

Dear Irwin,

This is a great photo of you with the Haystack Planetary Radar group from the

archives c1968. From left to right: Bill Smith, Rick Brockelman. Dick Ingalls, Mike

Ash and Gordon Pettengill at the Haystack taken around the time of the

measurements of the “Shapiro delay”.

Very best wishes from all of us at Haystack.

A Note to IrwinShapiro From: Avi Loeb

Irwin,

With gratitude for your generous support and friendship. I will always remember

the first time we spoke over the phone, when you offered me a junior faculty

position at Harvard. Twenty years later, I can say with confidence that without

your leadership, we would have never been able to get the ITC and the Harvard

Astronomy department to the level of excellence they exhibit today.

Yours,

Avi Loeb

Chair, Harvard Astronomy Department

Director, Institute for Theory & Computation (ITC)

A Note to IrwinShapiro From: Enrico Lorenzini, University of Padova, Italy

Dear Irwin,

I searched for pictures of you in my album but could not find any. Then I

realized that I do not have pictures of several long-time friends who have

played an important role in my life and I felt a bit better about this. I have

many pictures of things and places and chose these two pictures of a

particularly happy event that I like to reminisce. It was the Fourth

International Conference on Tethers in Space at the Smithsonian

Institution Headquarters in Washington DC in 1995. You were the

honored speaker at the conference that was attended by many

distinguished scientists, engineers, national and international authorities.

It was a time of great optimism just before the flight of the Tethered

Satellite-1R on the Space Shuttle the next year. It was a crowning event of

almost three decades of research on tethers in space conducted at the

Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics under your stewardship

and for which I thank you.

A Note to IrwinShapiro From: Gordon Pettengill

Hi Irwin!

The activity shown above seems a long time ago, but it certainly broke new ground.

CONGRATULATIONS! Spread the word and keep up the teaching---

All warmest wishes,

Gordon

(1) The research group involved in the Fourth

Test of Einstein’s General Theory of

Relativity, posed under the large Haystack

antenna within its radome. From left to right:

William B. Smith, Richard P. Ingalls, Richard

Brockelman, Michael Ash, Irwin I. Shapiro

and Gordon.

(2) Combined Haystack and Arecibo radar

observations of Venus, plotted against

Shapiro’s predictions (solid line) as the planet

passed behind the sun during Superior

Conjunction in 1970

A Note to Irwin Shapiro From Bob Reasenberg

In April 1992, Irwin entices Bob to Phillips

Auditorium for a meeting where everybody

(except Bob) knows that his wife has set up a

surprise birthday party for him. In 2002, the

same parties enter into a conspiracy to repeat

their previous success. This time, Irwin turns

up the razzle-dazzle creating a brilliant, multi-

step smoke screen and again delivering his

quarry at the appointed time and place.

Thank you! None else could have

pulled this off.

1992, at the first surprise party.

Irwin is exuberant at the 1992 party.

2002, on entering, Irwin is now sure he has played it well.

A Note to IrwinShapiro From: Alan E E Rogers

Dear Irwin,

I caught the smiles all around in this photo I took of you reminiscing with Bob

Coates and his wife on the occasion of the 40th anniversary of Haystack

Observatory in 2004. Haystack and I personally owe so much to your guidance,

insight and leadership in the development of geodetic VLBI which started in the

late sixties and led to the direct measurement of contemporary tectonic plate

motion, variations in earth rotation and polar motion.

Very best wishes – Alan

A Note to IrwinShapiro From: Clifford Will

I first became aware of Irwin Shapiro as a first-year graduate student in 1969, when my

advisor, Kip Thorne suggested that I look into the current status of experimental tests of

general relativity. I studied his derivation of the time-delay effect (the ``fourth test’’ of

general relativity), as well as the related derivation by Dewey Muhleman and Paul

Reichley (and would later understand why we today call it the ``Shapiro time-delay’’).

As I got more deeply involved in the theoretical interpretation of experimental tests of

GR, I seemed to encounter Irwin’s handiwork everywhere: the earliest measurements of

the deflection of light using radio telescopes, the first radar-ranging tests of the Shapiro

delay, the Viking tests of the delay, and lunar laser ranging tests of the Nordtvedt effect.

Irwin did me a great favor in 1986 when I was writing my popular book Was Einstein

Right? Knowing that Irwin had a reputation for … how shall I put it … pickiness, I sent

him drafts of several chapters, figuring that he would correct any misstatements having

to do with him. But instead he gave the chapters a thorough going-over, and send back

a detailed ``referee’s report’’ pointing out, not just factual errors, but also places where I

wasn’t being sufficiently clear, or where I was being overly technical, and so on. The

time and effort he put into this was far more than I would have expected, and helped me

to make major improvements in those chapters.

Irwin also paid me an astonishing compliment sometime during the 1990s. I had given a

colloquium at Harvard, and a few days later I received a handwritten note from Irwin.

He told me that my colloquium was the best he had ever heard, and that it was perfect in

every way. Knowing how tough it is to impress this guy, I was completely floored!

During my 13-year stint as chair of NASA’s Science Advisory Committee for Gravity

Probe B, I encountered Irwin a number of times via video feed at our meetings at

Stanford (we all know how much Irwin LOVES to travel). Irwin and his group were

using VLBI to measure the proper motion of the guide star being used as the reference

direction for the precession of the gyroscopes. I was reminded again of the great care,

attention to detail, and caution that characterizes how Irwin makes measurements.

My wife and I also recall fondly a pleasant evening spent in Paris with Irwin and his

wife a few years back.